Pages

Monday, November 26, 2007

I got this plant in a trade from a Garden Web member back in April 2007. It wasn't something I'd asked for, to trade – I had actually asked for an Aloe variegata (partridge-breast aloe), and the person with whom I was trading included several bonus Aloe cultivars and species in addition to the one I'd asked for. 1 So the plant and I were "set up," if you will.

I was pleased to have bonus plants, but not so pleased to have Aloes, which I've never been all that keen to grow. 2 I've heard a lot of stories about Aloes being prone to sudden declines over nothing in particular, which tends to make a person wary, and Aloe vera leaves me kind of cold aesthetically, probably a case of familiarity breeding contempt. But 'Black Gem,' along with another cultivar ('Walmsley's Blue,' not shown), have both done quite well for me, offsetting multiple times and having no watering or pest problems to speak of, and all of the others save one (A. nobilis, which rotted on me over the summer) have done fine here. So I've come to like them, and for a blind date, you'd have to say it's worked out well.

But about 'Black Gem' specificially: it's an attractive plant. It has a nice color (evenly dark green in lower light, dark red-green in high light: it's tough to get enough light on it indoors to see it change color, and you can't see it in the photo at all, but it's happened once, briefly), it's not sharp or thorny, it seems to offset freely, and it doesn't seem to be particularly attractive to pests. So I'm pretty happy with it. I worry about overwatering, and getting it enough light, but that's about it. I'm looking forward to when I can separate the offset and grow it on its own, but that's probably going to be a long wait: it's growing pretty slowly.

Trivia about the plant: well, there's not a whole bunch. I did find one site, which, alarmingly, notes that this plant is "fire retardant," leading me to wonder what kind of nutbar worries about his plants getting set on fire. Since when is this a selling point? Aren't most plants fire-retardant when they're not dead (Eucalyptus and Pinus aside)?

Anyway. Care is pretty much what you'd expect: bright light with at least some sun, water when dry, propagate from offsets. Humidity, feeding, underwatering, pests, temperatures, and grooming aren't huge issues.

-

Photo credit: me.

1 (brevifolia, greatheadii var. davyana, nobilis, maculata, 'Black Gem,' 'Minibelle,' 'Walmsley's Blue') 2 (Though for one reason or another, I've sure wound up with a lot of them. I've also been given an A. aristata hybrid and 'Doran Black.' Additionally, I've actually chosen and purchased 'Crosby's Prolific' and A. harlana. I only actually paid for two, yet I have ten different varieties (and seventeen individual plants) – does that seem right to you? Clearly I have some kind of Aloe-related karmic thing to work out. Maybe I was an Aloe in a previous life. That'd be weird.)

It's not that I don't believe it's true, it's just that I don't live in a part of the country where this is normally a big issue, so I've never had to think about it w/r/t someone else's property, and my gardening has pretty strictly been indoors, so flame-retardancy isn't really an issue for me w/r/t my own property either. It's a perspective issue. My whole plants-on-fire experience is limited to the Cryptanthus in the "nutbar" link.

Just so you know:

Infrequently Asked Questions

Have questions about PATSP? See the Infrequently Asked Questions post, or ask directly by e-mail. To e-mail, remove the two "d"s from the below address:

mrsubdjunctive@doutlook.com

Please note: I am a person, not a houseplant-care-advice vending machine. If you've asked a plant-care question and I responded, that took time and effort that I could have spent on something else, and it's nice if you acknowledge that with a "thank you."

Also: no, I will not help you draw attention to your Kickstarter. No, I do not need the services of a blog-ads optimizer. No, I'm not interested in promoting/reviewing/giving away your products. Fuck, no, I will not write for free for your blog. I know these things are important to you, and you feel that your case is so special that I would obviously make an exception to the rule if you asked me because of how special your thing is, but I assure you: it is not special, and I will not make an exception. (This means you, Mother Earth Living.)

Licensing

Photos on this blog attributed to mr_subjunctive are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License. All other photos retain the licensing preferences of their owners and require permission for reuse. Contact mr_subjunctive for help in locating the sources for other photos.
Text on this blog: all rights reserved. Text may not be duplicated by any means without permission of its author, who is actually pretty easygoing under most circumstances and will probably say okey-dokey if you ask to reproduce something (but you still have to ask, and credit mr_subjunctive as the author of the excerpted part).

Ass-covering legal disclaimer that should really be perfectly obvious to anybody reading this anyway

The thoughts, opinions, life choices, etc. discussed in this blog are those of its author, and are not necessarily endorsed by his former employer, nor were they ever necessarily endorsed by his former employer before she was former. In fact, I'm pretty sure we disagreed about a lot of stuff, which was additional incentive not to discuss anything that didn't relate pretty directly to plants. And as far as it goes, we disagreed about a fair amount of stuff directly relating to plants, too.

In any case. Nothing in this blog should be taken to represent my former employer's views on anything, except for the few things explicitly identified as her opinions, and even then it's possible I've misunderstood or exaggerated what her actual views were. So if you want to know what she thinks about stuff you should just ask her.